*GETTING PLAYED by Mia Storm* Blog Tour~Giveaway~Excerpt~Review

This is book 2 in Mia Storm’s Jail Bait series, an amazing series about taboo love…

Synopsis:

Rules of the game:

1) Never underestimate your opponent

2) Avoid personal fouls

3) Score early and often

4) Play or get played

Coach Marcus Leon has always played by the rules…until he meets Addaline Grace, the seventeen-year-old senior transfer on his Oak Crest High water polo team. Addie changes all the rules, mostly because she doesn’t play any games. But as off limits as she is, the more Marcus discovers about Addie, the more he finds himself…and the more he questions whether Addie might just be worth risking everything for.

For Addie, water polo is anger management. She’s driven and focused because it keeps her mind off other things…like the fact she destroyed her family. Her game plan is to keep her head down and graduate so she can leave her father and the crappy town he dragged her to in her wake. But when what starts as friendly completion with Marcus turns into more than a game, Addie has to decide if she’s willing to face down her demons…and possibly ruin the man she may or may not be falling in love with in the process.

What happens when the only thing you need is the one thing you can’t have?

“One more thing I can check off my bucket list,” he says with a grin, then shoves half the slice into his mouth.

“What else is on your list?” I ask.

He gives me a long look as he chews. “I don’t really have one, now that you mention it.”

“They’re stupid anyway,” I say with a shrug. “It’s a waste of time thinking about all the things you want to do before you die. You could die tomorrow and a bucket list isn’t going to mean squat.”

I only realize how bitter that sounded when his gaze locks on mine and sharpens, as if he’s lasering in on my thoughts.

I shake myself loose from those eyes that could compel me to spill my darkest secrets if I were to gaze into them too long and take a bite of pizza. “But whatever. If you want a bucket list, go for it.”

“You don’t have anything you want to do before you check out?” he asks with raised eyebrows.

“Haven’t thought about it.”

“Well you should,” he says, going for another slice. “I want a bucket list.”

“Then make one.”

He leans back and takes a bite. “So where should we start?”

“You already have,” I say with a wave of my slice toward his.

He holds his up. “And you’ve gotten me off to a fine one. So now we need something to top anchovies.”

“We?” I ask. “I told you I don’t want any part of this.”

“Tough, because what if your idea turns out the be the Best Thing Ever and I would have missed it because I never thought of it.” He tears off a hunk of pizza with his teeth. “Like anchovies.”

I look at him a long second as he chews and a hot tingle runs under my skin. “So we’d do stuff from the list together?”

He nods as he swallows. “That would be the general plan. Call it moral support, call it peer pressure, all I know is we’re more likely to check stuff off the list if we’re both doing it.”

My heart starts to pound as the possibilities scroll in my head. “How are we going to do this?”

“A collaboration. We’ll each throw ideas out until we have a list, then we can rank them together.”

“How do you know I won’t put something like ‘lose my virginity’ on the list?” Heat radiates from my face, but I force myself to hold his gaze.

There’s a second that he just stares at me, but then his eyes grows softer. “I’d expect you would.”

For several beats of my racing heart, we sit here staring at each other, then he clears his throat. “I want to try one new food a week. And I’m open to suggestions.” He says with a nod at the pizza box. “Your turn.”

“I have to come up with another one right here on the spot?” I say.

He cocks his head in a question, but then the light dawns in his eyes. “Ah…virginity. Right…” He pulls out his phone and starts typing it like it’s no big thing, then shifts and hooks an elbow over the back of the bench as he thinks. “Swim with dolphins.”

I nod. “That’s a good one. Put that on top.”

He raises his eyebrows as she shoots me a glance out from under those long, thick lashes. “Above virginity?”

All the muscles south of my waist contract. “I guess I’ll leave that up to you, since I’ve never done either.”

My Review: ⭐⭐⭐.5

Mia Storm has taken a serious topic, unfavourable kind of love, taboo relationships, and has turned it into an amazing series that makes wrong feel so damn right!

I fell absolutely head over heels in love with book 1, Getting Dirty, so when the opportunity came to review Getting Played, I was so excited! Marcus is Blaire’s (book1 heroine) brother, and going on what I knew of him, I wasn’t sure how much I’d enjoy him as a main character. He still holds the worst grudge over his sister’s relationship, so when Marcus (23) falls for Addie (17), a student and girl he coaches on the swim team, I just had to smile big!

You can’t help what the heart wants. You can’t control who you fall in love with, and Marcus not only fell, but that boy flailed the entire way down, landing with a bang. I ended up liking him so much more than I thought I would!

The problem I faced with this story is that I was looking for the depth that book 1 held. I wanted the intensity and powerful story that sucked me in the first time around, and maybe it was because I was comparing it, but book 2 fell a little short for me. It didn’t consume me like I had hoped it would.

Don’t get me wrong; Getting Played still has the angst you’d expect from a taboo kind of love, and I was anxiously waiting to know the outcome of those other accusations that kept Marcus and Addie apart, but it just wasn’t as gripping as book 1.

Never the less, I love the way Mia Storm portrays this topic, and I will definitely dive into book 3 if there is one!

Mia Storm is a hopeless romantic who is always searching for her happy ending. Sometimes she’s forced to make one up. When that happens, she’s thrilled to be able to share those stories with her readers. She lives in California and spends much of her time in the sun with a book in one hand and a mug of black coffee in the other, or hiking the trails in Yosemite. Connect with her online at MiaStormAuthor.blogspot.com , on Twitter at @MiaStormAuthor, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/MiaStormAuthor

Book 1

GETTING DIRTY

Dirty

A poem by Blaire Leon

If sex is dirty, why would I do it with someone I love?

If sex is dirty, then didn’t we all come from the dirt?

What if I like the dirt?

What if I want to get dirty?

What if I want to roll in the mud until I’m so fucking filthy that I’ll never be clean again?

When twenty-five-year-old graduate assistant Caiden Brenner asked Blaire Leon how old she was, she said she was a senior. He chose to believe she meant in college. They connect over Lord Byron’s Don Juan and, as their conversations become increasingly thicker with sexual innuendo, Caiden finds himself obsessing over a totally off-limits undergrad who’s bold, beautiful, brilliant, and one of the most passionate poets he’s ever met.

But it turns out Blaire hasn’t been totally honest. She’s the seventeen-year-old valedictorian of her high school class, taking courses at Sierra State while awaiting her acceptance to Stanford.

Will Caiden get too deeply into Blaire to back away before he finds out the truth? Or will their connection be enough to seduce him into risking his entire future on Jail Bait?